Germany’s Green party killed nuclear power. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, once a strong supporter of nuclear energy, reversed course in a nod to the Greens. It did her party, nor Germany, any good.
Diesel is dead, and rightfully so, but Germany is not prepared for it. The Greens are also after coal, GMOs, and in general big business.
These Green events coupled with a false sense of invincibility are at the center of the Demise of Deutschland and its vaunted export machine.
Germany’s once seemingly untouchable national champions – from VW and Deutsche Bank to Bayer and Wirecard – have been gripped by scandal and crisis. Business rivals are asking each other how much worse it can get for Deutschland AG.
Wolfsburg-based car maker Volkswagen is trying to move on from its 2015 diesel emissions scandal but, alongside its German rivals BMW and Mercedes-Benz owner Daimler, it could be hit with further fines by EU regulators over claims they colluded to block the development of clean air technology.
Then there’s Bavaria-based payments giant Wirecard, which has this year been hit with claims of fraud and accounting irregularities (the company has denied the allegations). And Leverkusen-based Bayer, the German chemical behemoth which acquired Monsanto for $63bn (£49.5bn) last year and now faces thousands of lawsuits over claims that Monsanto’s weed killer Roundup causes cancer.
But it is not just scandal-hit firms that are being dragged down. Last month Thyssenkrupp, the German lift company, said it would slash 6,000 jobs after abandoning plans for a merger with Tata Steel. Last week Cologne-based Lufthansa, Europe’s biggest airline, and Munich-based chipmaker Siltronic both issued profit warnings, the former squeezed by competition from low-cost rivals and rising fuel costs, and the latter hit by the US crackdown on exports to China, Germany’s major export destination.
“The issue for German companies is the over-reliance on exports which is great when global trade works [but] nowadays trade is questioned, the currency doesn’t offer incremental benefits and technological trends move away from German core skills,” says Arndt Ellinghorst, an analyst at Evercore who used to work for Volkswagen.
Green Politics
Via Eurointelligence. My additions in [ ].
The party [CDU/CSU] is torn between its traditional support for industry and the recognition that it needs to become greener. The Greens are now polling at the same level as the CDU/CSU, and even pulled ahead in some polls. CDU/CSU are no longer guaranteed to nominate the next chancellor. This new situation is beginning to have a big impact on the internal debate.
The argument is this time not between the two parties, but within the CDU. Angela Merkel and CSU-chief Horst Söder are calling for an end to coal-fired power stations by 2030 – as opposed to the previously agreed target of 2038, also the official recommendation of the coal commission. The commission was a classic stitch-up job to protect the interests of industry, and widely greeted with dismay. This has contributed to the dramatic rise in support for the Greens since February when the results were announced.
It reminds us of the most common argument against electric cars in Germany: it cannot happen because German car makers are simply not ready to mass-produce them. What those who argue in this way have not yet woken up to is that their underlying assumptions about German industrial production are going to be challenged as part of the climate policy as well. What they have not realized yet is that the targets are very easy to achieve – through less production at home.
The CDU would have been prepared for a coalition with the Greens as junior partner – as Merkel was in 2017. With the Greens as equal, let alone senior partner, this is a completely different situation. Climate targets will be to Germany what Brexit is to the UK.
Five Events
- Merkel foolishly did in nuclear to appease the Greens
- The German Car industry lied about diesel. The Greens stepped in and killed it.
- The Greens will kill coal.
- Brexit will hurt German exports no matter what happens now.
- Trump tariffs on German cars are likely to be the topper.
Deindustrialization of Germany
The Greens are going to force the deindustrialization of Germany.
- They do not want coal
- They do not want nuclear
- They do not want diesel
- The do not want Round-Up
- They do not want GMOs
- They do not want Google, Amazon, or any other large organizations
- They do want low-skill immigration
Green Irony
The Green victory leading to the demise of nuclear forced more use of dirtier coal. Now the Greens are after coal.
Killing coal as a method of producing electricity in Germany will do two things.
- Force up costs
- Shift electrical production from German coal to even dirtier coal in nearby countries.
Latest INSA Poll
Rise of the Greens
Earlier today I commented on the Rise of the Greens and how Merkel’s Coalition Partner, SPD, Vanishes Into Irrelevance.
The Greens will win. Expect a Pyrrhic victory. They will not save the planet.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Seriously, something’s in the water in Germany. Never mind the cancer that is the greens. But what about the once mighty scientific industrial complex? VW proudly announcing, soviet style, the ambition to become the biggest car company, then falling on its sword. Bayer boldly venturing into a market, it obviously had no idea about. Douche bank buying into investment banking because big banks do that. No one has accused Germans of being imaginative, but so much stupidity concentrated in one place?
Yes! The VW emission cheating scandal was unbecoming of their reputation. Seems like the Germans of old would have found a clever solution, but instead they took a shortcut. Perhaps too many non-engineers are running the show.
Germany left its best barrel of semen on the Russian front.
“But what about the once mighty scientific industrial complex? VW proudly announcing, soviet style, the ambition to become the biggest car company, then falling on its sword.”
When the amount of money simply being printed up, and handed out freely to dunces, massively outstrip what it is possible to earn by doing something useful; the people most valuable to a company’s shareholders are those good at getting their hands on the freshprint. Not those good at doing something as quaint and outdated as building cars, nor anything else productive.
The same happened in the Anglo world decades ago. Which is why there is barely any competitive industry left there. All C-suites dominated by self promoting yahoos good only at hobnobbing with banksters. And all boards packed with PE-clowns and other know-nothing, but regime-close, hacks.
Now, on account of the ECB coordinated European harakiri, even Germany is falling prey to the same pathology. When you have an economy by idiots, for idiots, it’s hardly surprising that ever greater idiocy become it’s main output.
“Rise of the Greens = Deindustrialization of Germany”
De-industrialization of U.S. resulted in Trump.
They are running a natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. Many Americans don’t know anything about the Kyoto protocol, or Paris agreements, but then again, we do like to choke on our pollution, as do the other industrialized countries that are stuck in the steam age. Life is not just about competitive and having moar, it’s also about cleaning your shit up, or cleaning up after yourself.
Are you old enough to remember the 1970’s? Things have been greatly cleaned up. If we are to keep feeding and housing and providing productive employment for the billions on this planet, industry has to advance. If you want to live in a mud hut, go for it. But don’t force it on me!
The Paris Accords and Kyoto are meant to transfer wealth from the West to the third world as a way to achieve grinding poverty for all under a one world government.
I am an environmentalist, seriously. I only drive a small car and would never drive anything bigger. I don’t travel for vacations beyond my close nearby, etc… The biggest threat to humanity is wasteful hilife in the once industrialized countries, and runaway population growth in the global s***tholes. None of it was addressed or even vaguely mentioned in the Kyoto/Paris protocols, because that might offend a voter demographic or be racist, and we don’t do that.
If you won’t mention the problem, don’t be surprised with the outcomes!
The rise of the Greens shows a fundamental flaw in German governance. Germany remains committed to democracy. This allows for uncontrollable political parties expressing the views of the uninformed.
Thank God our Founding Fathers saw fit to create a republic instead of a democracy. Where our betters could control just two political parties, giving the “common man” a sense of choice while still controlling the range of possible choices. And they can control the media, with each advocating for only one of the political choices, thereby keeping the masses at each other’s throats.
God Bless America!
Upvoted you for great sarcasm.
“What they have not realized yet is that the targets are very easy to achieve – through less production at home.”
Yes, we’re going to save the planet by outsourcing the pollution to another part of the world where the. Gov allows it, and at much higher levels.
Brilliant!
“The Greens will win. Expect a Pyrrhic victory. They will not save the planet”
Worse than that, the Greens will be the equivalent of the Weimar Republic to a rising AfD or some group actually more rabid.
Please read link below. Private Equity might benefit.
“Today Germans are, on average, less wealthy than Italians, Spaniards or the French.”
Behind all of this is a trend few comment on – the future resurgence of France. EU members don’t quite understand how French the EU will become in all matters.
Macron wants to be “Jupiter” and will manipulate to get there. EU defence, energy across border to Germany, supplant German industry and ultimately EU socialise French fiscal demands (costs of French benefits/social promises etc).
This is aided by UK parliamentary seats handed to France and the main element is the voting blocks of the indebted south. Spain, Porugal, Italy, Greece etc will all go along on the fiscal front.
Germany & Dutch tax payers are about to get screwed. In the name of EU-solidarity. Greens are perfect for this.
Germany just needs to get the heck out of the EU. It is simply impossible to remain an industrial and technological powerhouse, when you’re stuck with a central bank dedicated to rob competent industrialists, industrial workers and technologists of all they have by way of debasement; in order to transfer the spoils to self promoting halfwits in FIRE and “legal” rackets and governments.
Since the ECB went complete idiot, post 2008, Germany has picked up the same pathologies that previously destroyed the UK and US as industrial and technological powerhouses. Most clearly demonstrated by housing prices. Just as in the Anglo countries, the wealth which productive people in industry now produces, is largely stripped away from them by debasement, in order to hand welfare, by way of “asset appreciation,” to idle dunces sitting in decaying shacks cheering for government intervention. Every penny of those gains, are taken directly from the productive sectors which produced that wealth. Massively hampering their ability to innovate and add to the capital stock required to grow. Just like in the UK, US and Venezuela prior. Results of such idiocy simply cannot, ever, lead to any other outcome than decay.
If Germany ditches the EU, perhaps as a reaction to Brexit, Minibots or whatever, and have the sense to either use Gold, or at a minimum revert to a Bundesbank style, less insanely destructive, monetary policy; they’ll be back in the race in no time. The rot isn’t nearly as entrenched there as in the Anglo world, Just as it never really became as entrenched in Japan, due to the short duration of exposure to peak idiocy. But, conversely, the longer Germany stays in the EU, the more wealth and influence shifts to “home owners,” “investors,” banksters, ambulance chasers, apparatchiks and other dunces; and away from those who built, and are attempting to keep building, the industrial and technological might which the idiots are now tearing down and picking over.
The whole thing sounds like a perfect recipe for poverty.
Sounds like German workers should get used to walking to and from work… both ways.
I’ve been in manufacturing for close to 50 years. I don’t want to say that the general public is dumb….I will just say that they are misinformed or naïve. They have no idea what it takes to bring something to market and how our products are manufactured by industry or how our food is grown by farmers. Misinformed people want to outlaw quite a bit of stuff that makes our lives easy in comparison to our grandparents and great grandparents.
For example, they’ll bash ‘big oil’ and have no idea that all of our plastics come from oil, many pharmaceuticals have oil bases, also many cosmetics, etc. etc. They’ll say shut down big oil, shut down nuclear, shut down coal, shut down natural gas, and shut down hydro-electric dams….”we can get all power from the sun.” They don’t have a clue how easy our lifestyle is due to the energy we currently produce.
Let’s just look at our smart phones all day long, hold hands and sing Kumbaya.
Don’t forget that many clothes also come from oil.
No kidding flubber, misinformed and UNinformed. I know a LOT of people like that in liberal Kalifornia. BTW there are kids that have no idea those fields of corn, soybeans, wheat etc are where their food comes from.
People don’t understand how much power it takes to run a cell phone either. They think the only thing that counts is the battery in the handset. There’s an entire infrastructure behind it that consumes an incredible amount of electricity, and the more processing that’s done in “The Cloud™” the more it will be obscured.
That’s what central banking, financialization, progressivism and the pumping up of the FIRE and legal rackets are bound to do. Can’t be otherwise.
All the above serve only to transfer resources and wealth, hence political influence: Away from those competent enough to understand anything at all, including how things are built and made; and towards a privileged bunch of undifferentiated mediocrities in the above rackets too dumb to understand anything. Simply because the latter are more reliable regime sycophants, as all they own and have come as a direct result of regime manipulations and restrictions.
In general people complain about all scientific advancements. They don’t realize that people are healthier now than ever. They live longer than ever. And the world produces more food every year. Instead they see doom around every corner because they lack scientific knowledge and blindly believe the headlines.
They see doom because the MSM, schools, etc. feed them a steady diet of that S#!T. The West is blowing its collective brains out.
I am sorry; but I must disagree that the general populace is merely misinformed. They are fed a constant stream of propaganda through Government run education, media and Hollywood. They are exactly as they have been bred to be; useful Idiots.
The problem with the Environmental movement as a whole; is it suffers from what all Postmodern Marxist views do; that its belief systems are so divorced from reality that by the time they get close to their perceived Utopia and realize nothing they believe works in practice, the rest of us have a reduced standard of living, have less individual freedoms and are being crushed by unintended consequences.
Too bad the autobahns are unsuited for horse drawn wagons.
okay for bikes, the verges would be acceptable for foot traffic